Homomorphic-based Enhanced Visual Search is so privacy-preserving, iPhone giant activated it without asking

I have never liked Apple and lately even less. F… US monopolies

  • مهما طال الليل@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 day ago

    My iPhone 13 mini will be my lost iPhone. They lost me when it turned out they donate to illegal settlements in the West Bank. This is just more fuel to the fire.

  • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
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    1 day ago

    I love how Apple advertises “Privacy by default” but they do this

    • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Nah, they’re just checking to see if you guys are well proportioned or maybe you need something they can sell you. For example, new clothes? Dave, isn’t that the same jacket you always wear to work? You need a new one! Here are some options from Walmart, we’ll just hide them here behind this thing you’re browsing about right now… How about here too! And here!

  • VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    I don’t even get it. Like, make a pop up with a short blurb explaining the feature. Most users will probably opt in, and you don’t piss off the ones that don’t want this.

  • dubyakay@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    Enhanced Visual Search in Photos allows you to search for photos using landmarks or points of interest. Your device privately matches places in your photos to a global index Apple maintains on our servers. We apply homomorphic encryption and differential privacy, and use an OHTTP relay that hides [your] IP address. This prevents Apple from learning about the information in your photos. You can turn off Enhanced Visual Search at any time on your iOS or iPadOS device by going to Settings > Apps > Photos. On Mac, open Photos and go to Settings > General.

    Apple did explain the technology in a technical paper published on October 24, 2024, around the time that Enhanced Visual Search is believed to have debuted. A local machine-learning model analyzes photos to look for a “region of interest” that may depict a landmark. If the AI model finds a likely match, it calculates a vector embedding – an array of numbers – representing that portion of the image.

    So it’s local. And encrypted. How is this really news? Am I missing something?

  • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.comEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    once again having an old as fudge iphone has paid off

    if only i could have kept my iphone 5 working i could still be using headphones

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      2 days ago

      Tim Apple was going to kick $1M to whomever won. For a guy with a net worth in the tens of billions, this is just a tip to the wait staff at the Table Of Success.

      But the Apple photo library is a huge potential source of revenue. Its worth significantly more than $1M. This is, incidentally, why you don’t need to pay Apple to host those images. If you’re not the client, you’re the product.

      • boonhet@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        This is, incidentally, why you don’t need to pay Apple to host those images

        Huh? You pay for anything above 5 GB or so. It’s standard for most cloud providers to offer a free tier to get you hooked. Their storage after that isn’t all that cheap even.

  • kipo@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    An opt-out that you can’t opt out of because Apple already opted you in and took your photos?

    This seems like it is going to be a huge lawsuit. Since a class action won’t deter them or help us, let’s all sue Apple individually in small claims court and kill them by death from a billion cuts.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      According to another comment, the photos never leave your device, that part of the processing is done on-device. The global index is on Apple servers.

    • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      2 days ago

      Not saying that it shouldn’t be illegal and it’s shady as fuck, but GDPR opt-outs are usually retroactive, meaning you can remove consent from data they’ve already processed, and they have to retroactively scrub your personal data out.

      • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        How do they retroactively remove the knowledge the AI has gained from analyzing all of our personal information?

        • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          They don’t need to.

          They only have to remove your personal data. So the company / AI model is not allowed to have data specifically on you, but it can have the average age of people living in your town even if your data contributed to calculating that average.

          That said, Apple here never had affirmative consent, so they can’t get away with just doing this.

      • kipo@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        If they did this in Europe, I would argue it is a GDPR violation and it would be impossible for Apple to remove the data they collected. I hope the EU fines Apple out the nose for this.

  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    Although this is terrible, once again a headline on lemmy made me paranoid only to find out that my phone probably doesn’t even support this.

    Going through the settings and turning things off is second nature to me by now, it’s not unique to Apple (looking at your Microsoft).

    What we need is an opt out mode on every device. Similar to the accept necessary cookies only, we need every device to let you fully opt out from everything it can when you boot it up for the first time.

    • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
      0·
      2 days ago

      I don’t think it’s fair to say “once again a headline on lemmy”, by connotation you’re vaguely suggesting Lemmy is responsible.

      I’m a big settings person as well but honestly Apple is a fucking evil genius at hiding options in menus within menus. Plus this was an opt-change done randomly in the middle of “nobody knows”, I don’t check all of my settings and their subsequent menus daily for any changes being made.

      I’m just flabbergasted by the whole apple industry though. Like it’s obvious when a company wants to offer a new user experience (their newest innovative design!), and it’s obvious when a company wants to only tailor to “Their preferred vision of what an apple user and their experience should be”. No one asked for this shit, and it’s being shoved down everyone’s throats.

      I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I still watch people walk into a Dollar General knowing how crappy that company acts and how much more costly everything is. We’re all slowly being pigeon holed into a “unified user experience” and it’s the shittiest outcome.